Wednesday, 21 November 2012

World Food Shortage Solution - Grow Your Own Fruit & Veg

Climate Change is increasingly effecting our day to day lives. The immediate effects have been felt this year in the US midwest and more recently in New York. In the UK we had little significant sunny weather to report of and now we are seeing devastating floods all across the country. Nearly all scientists agree that the effects have been caused by humans and now it is our job to put it right.

We can try and put pressure on world governments to take drastic action before its too lat but with food prices going up way above inflation, one area we could all save money is by growing our own fruit and veg. We may well be in for another wet year in the UK next year as climate scientists tell us that oceans are heating up, causing more precipitation in the atmosphere in some areas of the world including Western Europe while other parts of the world are drying out.

If growing your own in the UK, we need to look at vegetable varieties that are tolerant of wet conditions. Vegetables such as cabbages and other green veg such as, kale, cauliflower and broccoli are all good choices for cool, damp ground. Celery has evolved from a swamp plant so this is another good option for a wet Spring/Summer. You could also try creating a herb garden with a selection of herb plants.

Planting in greenhouses is another option to keep your plants dry and warm. If looking at fruit to be grown in greenhouses, Indoor grape vines are ideal for this environment.

It could be a good idea to create drier conditions using raised beds. Build frames from rot resistant or plastic containers and fill with soil, mounting as high as possible to allow plenty of room for roots to grow so they do not sit in wet soil beneath the beds. The sides need to be a minimum 12 inches high, much higher if growing root crops like carrots or turnips.

While the UK and western Europe may be suffering from a wetter climate, areas such as the US midwest, Russia, and west Africa and drying out and crops such as coco and corn will not be able to grow. That's unless researchers can develop drought-tolerant plants capable of handling hotter, drier conditions like those forecast for areas such as west Africa.

Leading water scientists have issued one of the sternest warnings yet about global food supplies, saying that the world's population may have to switch almost completely to a vegetarian diet over the next 40 years to avoid catastrophic shortages. In the long term the vegetarian diet is only going to further push up prices of fruit and veg so living off the fat of the land maybe one solution providing the climate allows for it.

Changing to a vegetarian diet is one option to increase the amount of water available to grow more food in an increasingly climate-erratic world, the scientists said. Animal protein-rich food consumes five to 10 times more water than a vegetarian diet. One third of the world's arable land is used to grow crops to feed animals so the only solution is to grow more fruit and Veg and feed less animals.

If we have another bad crop yield in the largest producing countries such as the US and Russia, we could face even larger food price hikes on not only meet but also vegetables as any shortage in one food group will push all other prices.

Humans derive about 20% of their protein from animal-based products now, but this may need to drop to just 5% to feed the extra 2 billion people expected to be alive by 2050, according to research by some of the world's leading water scientists. We will have to come up with radical new ideas how to produce food to stop the world going hungry.